The Origin Stories of Hat & The Bins

September 19, 2024

People sometimes say to me, John, you're an intelligent man, you're a professional marketer, you've had a successful career. Why do I only know about you because of your hat? And why do you sit in front of the bins?

And to be fair they're good questions.

So I thought I'd give you the Hat and bins origin stories.

So for Hat, we go back to the early pandemic, between lockdowns.

In Richi Sunak’s ill-fated “eat out to help out” era I would quite often go out for a walk, though not to my local pub, deliberately one that was 15 minutes walk so that I got some exercise in. I’d then sit there with a beer and read or study before walking the 15 minutes back home, feeling like I’d earned the beer.

That was the highlight of my lockdown life.

Now, I would always wear a baseball cap, because my eyes are sensitive to sunlight and, being awkward, I don’t like umbrellas, so it serves for both sunshine and rain

One “exercise” trip, I was sat in the pub, cap on the table, and watching a Mark Ritson lecture asI was taking one of the Marketing Week Mini MBAs at the time. I somehow managed to knock my pint glass over, the full pint covering my cap.

Taking it home sopping and smelling like a brewery, I tried to wash the smell away. But no joy.

I need a new cap.

At the time non-essential shops weren’t open, so I bought what looked like a decent replacement on Amazon.

When the hat arrived I immediately knew it was a mistake. I bought a hat that only a pretentious arsehole would wear.

To test how pretentious arseholey it was, and no doubt boredom played a part, I tweeted a photo of it saying something like

“Look at the hat I just bought. I can't wear this, can I?”

My friends and peers of marketing Twitter disagreed and in fact insisted it was cool and that I should wear it.

Not only that, they wanted to see me wearing it.

So now I had this army cap, which I hated but which my Marketing Twitter pals seemed to like, so I wore it out a couple of times and posted selfies with the hashtag, #AdventuresOfHat.

And that was it. It just of took off. I called it Hat.

Not long after I would get people would ask about Hat quite often, and I realised it had become a distinctive asset.

I could go to events. I could go to meetups as we moved out of lockdown and people would recognise my hat, and therefore they would realise it was me. It became an icebreaker.

Being a practical marketer I had to stick with it. It was working.

Now, I still hate the hat. It's not a hat that I would normally choose to wear, it's not a style I'd normally choose to wear, but it works.

Obviously I had to get over myself, and had to get over my ego with it, because at one point I was thinking, people like the hat more than they like me.

And, well, there is some truth in that but it doesn't matter. Because they remember it's me under the hat.

So that's Hat. Now the bins.

Similar to Hat, this began in lockdown and was me tweeting nonsense to a large degree.

People were posting the views from their homes. And there were some gorgeous views out there.

I'm in my little flat in Loughton. And I'll be honest I can see Epping Forest from my home office window, and it is beautiful. But the bins are directly opposite my flat.

So again, for shits and giggles, I tweeted a photo of the bins and tagged it #BinsOfLoughton. It became another silly little thing that I did to amuse myself and clown around with online.

I even had a Christmas party with the bins of Loughton, as well as several of my hats (OK, confession, I’ve always loved a hat. As a kid a flat cap, in my Shoreditch DJ days a trilby, so I had a few by now). We all had cans of beer and Christmas hats. Just silly stuff, just having a laugh on Twitter with my mates.

But when I sat down to think about how best I could share my thoughts and ideas, and generate more awareness of my services, I quickly realized that video was going to be a more manageable medium for me. And it is, I start with video always and the edit – as I am doing right now – the transcript into an article and newsletter version.

So then started thinking about the format, the setting, and knew I couldn't do what others are doing - the earnest sat at the desk talk, or leaning over the mobile talk, or walking down the street.

I needed to do something different. Something distinctive, that people will remember.

Now, have you ever seen a professional talking about their industry whilst sat in front of some bins?

No, me neither.

That was it. Bins came from there.

Then I thought, what're we going to call this thing? So I did a little post on LinkedIn, and then a vote, and two brilliant suggestions came out.

To be honest, Lyons Share came out top, second being Bin Juice.

Now, Bin juice is visceral, right? It's horrible. It's perfect.

So I figured I'd take the Lyons Share for my newsletter and blog, and use Bin Juice for the video series.

And here we are.

It doesn't have to mean anything. It's memorable. It's distinctive.

Hopefully you'll remember the quality of the content and the smarts I share, but whenever you see the bins or Hat, you're going to notice John Lyons there, aren't you?

And that's it, simple as that.

My own distinctive assets.